by Suzy Parish
“We hadn’t heard about him,” I said slowly. Faces flashed through my mind. Someone’s husband would never come home. I sucked in my breath. Not Rasool. “Was he one of ours from the academy?”
“No, he worked with the Afghan Army. He was asleep when the attack began. RPG went right through the roof of the tent. Poor guy probably never heard it coming.”
“Is that the tent we had all those injuries in?” I asked.
“The same one.” Thorstad shook his head. “I’m glad I’m going home. I’m done with this.”
Thorstad. My comic-book-reading, candy-delivering friend. Home seemed pretty far away to me right then. Our yellow Craftsman on Wells that needed so much work felt like heaven.
We continued to walk the rest of camp. Classes were shut down, and there was not much else we could do except prepare for the upcoming week. We made the full circle and ended up back in our tent. Travis and I had a little more housekeeping to do. I sorted through papers in my room, placed more books and movies back on my shelves. I checked the news online before I dropped off to sleep.
Camp Paradise was mentioned, just not the kind of story we wanted to make:
Dispatch from a major news carrier:
October 27, 2011
Kandahar, Afghanistan
The attack began around 2:45 PM. Kandahar Training Center was fired upon by an unknown number of gunmen from positions in an empty three-story building a quarter of a mile from the camp. A spokesman said Taliban took responsibility for the attack. The base houses the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team that leads efforts to aid the local government. Eight Americans were injured during the attack, seven of them soldiers and one civilian. An Afghan interpreter was reported killed.
I wrote an email to Sophie before falling asleep. It was late. I spent the last few hours straightening my room, but the truth was I was so amped up on adrenaline, I couldn’t have slept if I had wanted to.
Sophie,
The academy was hit by four RPGs. I’m back in my tent. It’s 4:00 AM. Trying to get some sleep. I’m exhausted.
Thank everyone for all the prayers. The academy is pretty torn up.
Love you,
Mac
~*~
The academy was back in business. We finished our classes for the day and broke for lunch. Lack of sleep was starting to take a toll on me, so I decided to try and take an after-lunch nap. I pushed the tent door open.
Stockton was on the phone. There was so little privacy around here, I tried to pass his room quickly, so I didn’t disturb his conversation. That was when I heard it‒
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. They submitted paperwork the other day. I’m getting a Bronze Star.”
Bronze Star and Stockton didn’t belong in the same sentence. I wasn’t an eavesdropper, but I stopped and listened to that conversation.
“I rescued a guy that was bleeding all over the place after the attack. Yeah, I bandaged him up. Saved his life, medics said. Now Colonel Smith is giving me an award. I had to turn in a narrative about what happened. When they read it, they were impressed. The colonel called me into his office and said they would present me with the Bronze Star at the next awards ceremony. Well, yes, it’s a very prestigious award.”
I forced myself to move on. My stomach lurched. I thought I would lose my lunch.
I turned back and headed to Travis’s room. He wouldn’t believe it.
And Glenn wasn’t even here to refute Stockton’s story; he was back in the States recuperating.
I pounded on Travis’s door until it vibrated like a drum.
“What?” Travis threw the door open, annoyed until he saw it was me.
“Let me in. You won’t like this.”
He ushered me into his room and shut the door. “What’s up?”
“I just passed Stockton’s room. He was on his phone. He’s turned in a narrative on the attack.”
“So?”
“So, he’s a hero. We’ve been living with a hero and never knew it.”
“Now you’ve got me confused.”
“Stockton told his girlfriend he’s to be awarded the Bronze Star.” I sank down on the bed. “Stockton, a hero. Heaven help us.”
Travis rubbed his hand across his forehead. “But you had to order him to help Glenn. Then he ran off when he saw he could push it off on me.”
“I know.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Yeah, it is.”
A sharp crack reverberated through the tent. Travis and I jumped to our feet.
Travis grabbed his vest and jammed his helmet on his head. He would not be caught again on the wall with just his M-9.
I ran out Travis’s door to grab my vest and helmet. As I passed Stockton’s room, his door burst open, and he fell heavily against me and rolled onto the floor, blood spurted through his boot. They fired into the tent and hit Stockton? I ripped my T-shirt off, removed Stockton’s boot and sock, and wrapped his foot to stop the bleeding.
Travis jumped across Stockton and checked the room. I was busy applying pressure to stop the flow of blood. Stockton moaned like a dying animal.
“Clear,” Travis called out then leaned back into the hall. “There’s no entry from the exterior. His M-9’s laying on the floor.” Travis turned to Stockton. “Did you shoot yourself, idiot?”
“Stockton?”
His face was white. His lips parted, and he mumbled. “I was just cleaning my M-9. I didn’t think it was loaded.”
The ‘didn’t think’ part was too tempting to comment on, so I let it slide.
Travis ripped open a field dressing from his IFAK. He mashed it onto Stockton’s foot as I removed the T-shirt. Stockton screamed.
The tent door opened and medics pushed their way in. Someone must have called them. Everyone in camp was on hyper alert since the attack.
“What happened?”
“Accidental discharge.”
The first medic shook his head.
“Window or aisle?”
Stockton clutched his foot and was distracted enough by the question to stop his hysterical moaning. “What?”
“Congratulations. With an accidental discharge, you just won a ticket home. It’s a joke. I was asking if you wanted a window or aisle seat. It would have looked better on your record if you’d transferred.”
Travis and I backed off into my room and let the medics do their thing. They loaded Stockton up on a stretcher and took him off.
Word spread and MPs canvassed Stockton’s room. They took our narratives and confiscated his weapon.
The next day when classes were over, Travis and I passed Stockton’s room. His door was propped open. His room was vacant except for a few candy wrappers and some empty water bottles.
Travis poked his head in the door. “Looks like he’s been sent home.”
“Yeah.” I stood in the doorway and surveyed the empty room.
Travis pushed past me. “Let’s see if there’s anything we can use before the new guy arrives, whoever he is.”
It was customary to raid rooms as soon as someone went home. With a shortage of building materials and computer chairs, there was always something getting swapped around or re-purposed. The camp was a huge barter system. If one couldn’t find what one needed, chances were, someone else had it and was willing to make a trade.
“I always liked this computer chair.” Travis sat in the black, high-backed chair. He spun around.
“It’s fancier than mine,” I said. “And the back doesn’t fall off.”
Travis stopped spinning long enough to grab something off the floor. When he turned the chair around a single sock dangled from his hand. “Looks like he’ll be one sock short when he gets home.”
I took a sharp intake of breath when I saw it.
“Caribe” was stitched in tan letters on the toe. It was the mate to the sock someone had left for Phoenix to play with in my room. Stockton had been my puppy savior.
31
“I just g
ot your e-mail with the picture of you.”
“Which picture?”
“One of you and two other guys standing by a cement wall. The first guy has chestnut brown hair and a beard. He’s a big guy, like a football player.”
“That’s Glenn. Remember me telling you about him when I was home on leave? I worked pretty closely with him. He’s the one who was injured in the attack. That photo was taken seconds before we got hit.”
“Is he all right?”
“I got an e-mail from him today. He’s in rehab. He lost a leg in the blast.” The words tasted bitter in my mouth. I was still trying to come to grips with Glenn’s injuries. He’d taken a hit that had been rightfully mine. Seconds before the blast, I’d moved ahead along the wall, and Glenn moved into my former position. The thought made the hair on my arms stand up.
“Please tell him the next time you e-mail him that I’m praying for him.”
“Yeah, I never thought he’d be injured the way he was. Glenn’s been doing this for years, and he seemed untouchable.”
“Who’s the guy to your left in the picture, the one with the blond hair?”
“That’s Travis. He’s one of my friends here. He’s even-keeled. As a matter of fact,” I contemplated Sophie’s face. “Sometimes I think his personality is a lot like yours.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It just hit me right now why I get along so well with Travis. He doesn’t get upset easily about things, and he’s a philosopher, thinks things through. Besides that, he always encourages me.”
“That’s sweet, babe.”
“I’ll miss all of them. You work, eat together, sleep in the same tent. It makes it hard to get along sometimes, too, but it forces you to work out your differences and function as a team.”
“Mac.” Sophie had stopped listening. She stared at something else in the picture. Her mouth opened in a pucker and her brow drew up. “This was taken before the attack?”
“Seconds before.”
“The guys standing next to you are wearing polos, long pants, and boots. Why are you in shorts and a T-shirt?”
I sighed. What difference did it make what clothes I was wearing? Sophie was a detail person. “I’d already changed into my shorts and T-shirt because our work day was over.”
“And running shoes,” Sophie said.
“And running shoes.”
“Mac.” Sophie couldn’t contain her excitement. Her face burst into a smile, the broadest I’d seen since I’d been in Afghanistan. “Mac, do you have your tennis shoes near you?”
I laughed out loud. The question was absurd. Everything in the room was within arms-length for me, even if I was sitting down. “Yes. They’re on my feet, as a matter of fact.” Her excitement made me smile and something about the way she looked caught me up in her wonder.
“Mac!” The urgency in her voice brought me back. “Mac, take your shoes off!”
I slipped my feet out of my tennis shoes. A tan dust line encircled my socks where they met the shoes, a reminder that a trip to the Happy Sock Laundry needed to happen soon. I was running out of clean underwear. “OK.” I held up the empty shoes to the screen so she could see.
Sophie leaned forward in her seat. “Pull the insert out of your shoe!”
“What?”
“Pull that black thing out of the bottom of the inside of your shoe.”
“Which one?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just do it!”
A shiver crept up my spine. I didn’t know what Sophie was playing at, but I had the distinct feeling Someone else was in the room with me, a warm, comforting Presence. That was crazy. It was late, and all the other guys had gone to bed. I shook the feeling off and pulled the foam liner out of the shoe. In the empty bed of the sole of my shoe, were words written in faded blue marker. In Sophie’s handwriting, it read, “Psalm 91, The Lord is my refuge.”
So that was why she wanted my shoes the day I was packing. I got my secret love note from her after all‒
“I was so mad at God,” Sophie said.
“What?”
“I prayed for you before you left, and I couldn’t get this scripture out of my head. Remember, your boots weren’t issued yet?”
“I remember.”
“The night I hid that verse in your shoes, I complained to God with every word I scribbled. I wanted to write that verse in your boots because if you were ever under attack, I wanted you to have that verse with you. I knew there was nothing magical about it, but it was an agreement between God and me. It was my way of letting Him know I trusted Him to take care of you.”
“That’s one of the sweetest things you’ve ever done for me, Soph.”
“Don’t you get it?”
“What?”
“God knew which shoes you’d be wearing the hour of the attack.”
32
“This six-man class is the best we’ve taught yet,” I whispered to Travis who was standing beside me.
The APTS, or Advanced Police Tactics and Skills, students’ graduation was underway. An attack couldn’t stop our mission. The guys were all current police officers, three of the six from different cities. They had a drive to learn, which made it a thrill to teach them. They looked sharp in their steel blue uniforms. Hats straight, they approached the visiting Afghan general one at a time, saluted, and took their diploma.
They called Ace’s name, and he approached the general. He marched proudly to the front in an exaggerated goose-step march that the Afghans employed. His salute was crisp. He moved down the line, and it was my turn to shake his hand.
“Congratulations,” I said. “Good job.” My chest swelled with pride. I remembered a story about a little boy struggling to throw a starfish back into the swelling waves. An old man came along beside the boy, watched him pitch the starfish back into the deep. There were hundreds of starfish washing up, stranded and dying on the hot sand. After a few moments, the old man addressed the boy. “Look at all these starfish, and you, only one little boy. What you are doing will not make a difference.” The little boy looked up into the hardened face of the old man. “It makes a difference to this one,” he said, as he pitched a solitary starfish back into the waves.
That was how I felt the day I handed Ace his diploma. As I shook his hand, sunlight flashed off his wrist. He was wearing the watch he’d won at Range. He was never without it. Normally, he would have had his sleeve rolled up so the other students could admire his trophy. He grinned at me, gave his memorized speech just as we had practiced. He turned sharply, held his diploma high above his head and shouted “Life!” in Pashto.
I didn’t know who was prouder, Travis and me, or the students. We spent all week working with the students, perfecting marching and salutes.
After the ceremony, the students dispersed. They would be returning to their home cities, to their families. The academy had been a mini-vacation of sorts for them. No one shooting at them, they were able to eat and sleep and have camaraderie with guys who faced the same threats each day. I’d miss them.
~*~
The next day, a call came through on computer. It wasn’t Sophie. I clicked on the button, and there he was…
“Hey, old man. How’s it going?” I said, trying to sound upbeat, or however one was supposed to address someone who’d lost a leg.
“Hanging out here in rehab, back in the States,” Glenn said. “How’s life at Camp Paradise?”
“Things are winding down. The cigar club disbanded after you left.”
“No?”
“You were the driving force behind it, you know that. Thorstad got orders to return to the States. He was up most of the last night packing. Bashir will miss him, I’m sure.”
“It’s for the best my friend, for the best. I told you he let his guard down with the locals. Sooner or later it would have come back to bite him in the—”
I heard a woman’s voice off-screen. “It’s time for your pain pills, Mr. Thurman.”
“Just a min
ute, buddy,” Glenn said. He lifted a small paper cup and threw what were probably pills into his mouth, grabbed a cup of water, and washed them down. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and tossed the paper cup into a bedside trashcan. “I can’t complain too much. Food’s decent. Physical therapy is torture, but hey, what do you expect?”
I found myself absentmindedly rubbing my calf and stopped.
“You want to know the worst part?” Glenn leaned toward the screen.
“What?”
“I wouldn’t give the coffee here to that mutt of yours. It’s unrecognizable as fit for consumption by humans. You have to really make an effort to turn coffee into burnt sludge. The other thing is, I have to wait until someone can take me outside to have a cigar.”
“I pity the one who gets in the way of you and your cigar. Did they patch you up?”
“I’ve decided to become a pirate.” He waved the stump of his leg in the air. Bruised, bandaged and swollen, it was anything but humorous. The pain pills must have kicked in. “I did come away from this with something valuable.” He held what appeared to be a certificate. It had an official-looking stamp.
“WinCorp gave me a commendation.”
“You deserve it,” I said.
Glenn stopped grinning. “I’d trade it this minute to get my leg back.”
“You took that hit for me.”
“How do you figure?”
“When we moved down the wall, Travis ran to the tent to kit up. You ended up standing exactly where I had been. I should be the one in rehab. You should still be here, annoying people and smoking your ridiculous cigars.”
“All that time spent mentoring you wasted.” Glenn glanced away. He repositioned himself, dragging his stump onto a pillow. He grunted with effort.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, McCann, you spend too much time blaming yourself. You’ve got to let things go, man. So what if I was standing in your spot? Would you have rather it been you? Would you rather go home to Sophie minus a leg?”
I shook my head. “No, truthfully, but I didn’t want it to be you, either.”
Glenn closed his eyes and exhaled. “That’s just it. We don’t get to choose.”
~*~